Serge Poliakoff's most creative period and the pinnacle of his artistic development were the 1950s. A period during which he enjoyed great success. In 1956, Michel Ragon published the first monograph on his work. In 1954, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York purchased his 1950 painting “Composition,” and in 1957, Poliakoff's works featured in a major exhibition in the US art metropolis. In 1962, 17 of his paintings took up an entire exhibition section of the French pavilion at the XXXI Venice Biennale. From then on, Poliakoff, alongside Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, and Pierre Soulages, was considered one of the prominent figures of post-war French abstract art.
With great sophistication and seemingly inexhaustible creative energy, inspired by, among others, the works of Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, the artist developed a highly distinctive abstract style in those years, initially conceiving it as a framework of angular, irregular shapes and subsequently adding numerous layers of highly contrasting colors. “Form and color come from a considerable depth, and the vibrant surface is their echo. Everything vibrates in Poliakoff's paintings: the paint, carefully applied in multiple layers; its substance and value; the quality of the tone and its relationship to other tones; the distribution of weights that rise and fall [...]” (Will Grohmann, in: Exhibition booklet Serge Poliakoff, Galerie ‘Im Erker’, St. Gallen 1962, p. 10)

The present work is characterized by balanced forms that play with a certain symmetry and float in the center of the composition. Poliakoff bathes them in warm, sunny yellow and dark black, creating an appealing contrast between cold and warm, light and dark, against their otherwise varied light-blue surroundings. Under the painting's apparent monochrome margins, numerous hidden color layers, including an intense red, flash through the light blue areas here and there and are clearly visible on the back of the canvas. The differentiation and complexity of the colors in these intricate ‘color puzzles’, as well as the impasto and lively surface so typical of Poliakoff, stand in direct contrast to the outward simplicity of these works. As a result, they are never monotonous but relatively quiet, balanced, harmonious, yet versatile, compelling, and expressive. “When a painting is calm, I consider it an artistic success. Some of my paintings begin with great turmoil; they are explosive, but I am not satisfied until I have brought calm to the painting.” (Serge Poliakoff, quoted from: Exhibition booklet Serge Poliakoff, Moderne Galerie Otto Stangl, Munich 1962, n.p.) [CH]